Americans, you should come to China. Visit. Come live. It's an interesting place now. Why do I say that? Give me one minute to convince you that China is one of the most beautiful places you have ever seen. And you’ve seen none of it. Does anyone even know about it? Some places are so astonishingly beautiful. Qingdao, Zhangjiajie, the incredible cliffs that plunge down into the Yangtze River, Yellow River as it runs through these vast plains. Palaces spread across the country are hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old.
The food there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It's the richest, most varied, best cuisine in the world. And it gets no credit. But you come here and realize that the province has its own cuisine, which differs from French to Italian to Kenyan food.
You eat some of the most delicious food you ever have. Some of the spiciest, some of the saltiest, some with the strongest umami flavor you’ve ever experienced. And you could literally eat a different meal every day of the year in China and never repeat it.
The people. Chinese people will welcome you. Chinese people are curious about the outside world in a way that very few other countries will.
The history, you know, we’re used to studying Greek, Roman, and European history. China's history is longer, just as fascinating, rich, and varied.
Chinese fashion. You know, you want to see where the future of fashion is. Want to see where people are innovating in a way like nowhere else. No, you want to see styles we’ve never seen in your life.
Places like this. Architecture, when’s the last time you saw a building anywhere that made you say, “Wow? How did they do that?” You’ll see that every day in every city in China.
The technology—it’s astonishing. To everyone who comes to. Trains, the way you pay for things, no. No one would ever pull out cash in China anymore. You walk up, pick something up, and pay for it on your phone or just visual recognition.
Chinese literature, Chinese writing, and Chinese calligraphy are a thing.
I’m biased because I have lived there for 27 years. There are a lot of fascinating places in the world, but most of them you know about sort of had a bit of an interface with China.
It is one of these strange places where a vast amount of amazing stuff is. It’s such a contradiction with how much people know about it. I mean, I said it really right. In America, we encountered China through a little Chinese restaurant or maybe through Chinatown. It’s not that China is so much more interesting than other places; it’s that the vast amount of cool stuff and amazing stuff here conflicts with the narrow window we get of China.
What you have to understand about China is that you can’t think of China as the equivalent of Spain or France or, like these, as a tiny country. You can’t think of China just as a country. You should think of it as a vast civilization. It’s amazing that you barely know exists.
So come. It’ll be one of the most interesting decisions of your life.
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